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Many supporters of installing true immigration reform have faulted the Trump administration for not ending the DAPA amnesty that was created illegally by the Obama administration. But there are other reforms that also have not been acted on.

While Trump has indicated he intends to take back some of Obamas actions normalizing diplomatic relations with Cuba, there has been no mention of the administration undoing special immigration provisions for Cubans put in place by the Clinton administration at the same time that the wet-foot dry-foot policy was put in place by executive action. Clinton, at that time, agreed by executive action to accept a floor of 20,000 immigrant admissions of Cubans each year. This floor on the admission level does not exist for any other country and is a distortion of the overall immigration law.

Also with regard to Cubans, the United States has been allowing Cubans to apply for refugee status and permanent residence in the United States without ever leaving Cuba. That flies in the face of the international standard that a refugee is a person who has fled his country because of persecution or other factor. In part, this exceptional treatment for Cubans was adopted as a way to help meet the 20,000 floor on annual admissions.

Probably due to the in-country refugee processing for Cubans, The Obama administration instituted a similar program for Central Americans. Rather than having to get to the United States to make a claim for asylum, they could try for a refugee visa while still in their home country. That too was done by executive action.

The processing of refugees in their home country dates back well before the Clinton action for Cubans. A similar policy was already in place for Jews and other religious minorities attempting to leave the erstwhile USSR. That was different, however, because it was done by Congress, and has been perpetuated up to the present day despite evidence of significant fraud such as its use by members of the Russian mafia to enter the United States

While Congress should undo the refugee exception applied in Russia, the Trump administration should take action to terminate the exceptions for Cubans and Central Americans. The need to enact these reforms is not new, but the Obama administration turned a deaf ear to this need.

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Loose Ends in President Trump's Immigration Reforms - ImmigrationReform.com (blog)

Every year the First Amendment Center of the Newseum Institute conducts the State of the First Amendment survey, which examines Americans views on freedom of religion, speech, press, assembly and petition, and samples their opinions on contemporary First Amendment issues.

The results of the 2017 survey show that, despite coming out of one of the most politically contentious years in U.S. history, most Americans remain generally supportive of the First Amendment. When asked if the First Amendment goes too far in the rights it guarantees, 69 percent of survey respondents disagreed.

However, there are ideological divisions in attitudes toward the First Amendment, with liberals and conservatives disagreeing on the amount of protection the First Amendment should provide in certain scenarios. Conservatives were more likely than liberals to believe government officials who leak information should be prosecuted and the government should be able to hold Muslims to a higher level of scrutiny. However, liberals were more likely than conservatives to think that colleges should be able to ban speakers with controversial views and people should not be able to express racist views on social media.

This year, 43 percent of Americans agreed that news media outlets try to report the news without bias a significant improvement from only 23 percent in 2016. However, a majority of Americans (61 percent) expressed a preference for news information that aligns with their own views, demonstrating that many Americans may not view biased news in a negative light. The 2017 survey also attempted to assess the impact of the fake news phenomenon. Seventy-four percent of Americans did not think that fake news reports should be protected by the First Amendment, and about one-third (34 percent) reported a decrease in trust in news obtained from social media.

Regarding freedom of religion, 59 percent of Americans believe religious freedom should apply to all religious groups, even those widely considered as extreme or fringe. The age group least likely to agree with this is Americans between the ages of 18 and 29: Just 49 percent of them supported protection for all religious faiths, compared to more than 60 percent for every other age group.

On free speech, 43 percent of Americans felt that colleges should have the right to ban controversial campus speakers. Those who strongly agreed or disagreed with this tended to be current students and/or activists (people who had participated in political actions during the past year, such as signing a petition or attending a protest) on both sides of the political spectrum. Other Americans even those in the 18 to 29-year-old millennial demographic were more lukewarm on this issue.

We were glad to find that most Americans still support the First Amendment, although its troubling that almost one in four think that we have too much freedom, said Lata Nott, executive director of the First Amendment Center. Its also troubling that even people who support the First Amendment in the abstract often dislike it when its applied in real life.

Survey conducted and supported by Fors Marsh Group, and contributing support provided by the Gannett Foundation.

Read the full report: http://www.newseuminstitute.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/06/FAC_SOFA17_report.pdf

First Amendment Center

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STATE OF THE FIRST AMENDMENT | Columns | thehawkeye.com - Burlington Hawk Eye

Toronto Sun

The clogging arteries of America's First Amendment Toronto Sun If the First Amendment is indeed the beating heart of the American experiment, as one politico recently put it, then U.S. President Donald Trump is giving it a coronary. He should be ignored, but the self-absorbed talking heads in the mainstream ... The upside to Trump's CNN wrestling tweetWashington Examiner CNN's Jeffrey Lord outdoes himself in defending Trump's CNN-beating tweetWashington Post (blog) Trump's Strain on Free SpeechU.S. News & World Report The Atlantic -The Guardian -Newsmax all 932 news articles »

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The clogging arteries of America's First Amendment - Toronto Sun

When Donald Trump began to block a growing number of Americans from seeing his tweets, the Knight First Amendment Institute shot back. The organization warned the President in June that the Twitter account is a public forum, and that excluding citizens (novelist Stephen King is among those blocked ) violates the Constitution.

The argument is novel and not every legal scholar thinks it will succeed. But whatever the outcome, the dispute over Trump's tweets reflects how free speech fights are changing in the digital age. Today, many of the legal battles turn on technology, surveillance and who should control powerful communications platforms, like Facebook and Twitter.

Fortune spoke to the Knight Institute's first director, Jameel Jaffer , and staff attorney, Alex Abdo , to learn more about free speech flash pointsand how they intend to stand up for the First Amendment in the time of Trump.

Free Speech on Facebook's Public Square

Jaffer is an affable, ardent 40-something with a sparkling legal resume: Harvard Law Review, clerk to the Chief Justice of Canada and, most recently, deputy legal director of the ACLU. Now, he has the biggest job of his life leading the Knight Institute.

The goal of the center, which opened this year as a $60 million joint initiative of the Knight Foundation and Columbia University, is to defend free speech through research, lawsuits and education. It will pay close attention to technology.

New technology has transformed the landscape. A lot what used to take place in the public square now takes place on proprietary networks," Jaffer says, pointing to the influence of Facebook and other social media companies on politics.

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Today, these companies have more influence than traditional news outlets. Yet they are less willing to take up the torch when it comes to fighting for the First Amendment in court. Unlike the newspapers that foughtand wonmany landmark First Amendment cases at the Supreme Court in the 1970s and 80s, tech firms are absent from many big free speech fights.

What's more, Jaffer worries the likes of Twitter and Facebook possess too much power over what people can hear and say in the first place. And when it comes to challenging them, it's an uphill legal fight since they are private companies , which are not subject to the First Amendment.

But that doesnt mean its not a free speech issue. Its probably the most important free speech issue of our agethe power of social media companies over the speech we are allowed to hear, says Jaffer.

This why controversies like the one over Donald Trump blocking citizens from seeing his tweets are so important. They involve traditional free speech concernsthe President could never block people from seeing a government web siteand new social media technology.

In July, following another social media rant by the President, the Knight Institute's case that social media is subject to the First Amendment got a little stronger:

Speech in the age of Surveillance

While social media companies control over public discourse is a major threat to free speech, its hardly the Institute's only concern. Another worry is creeping surveillance technology and the government's ability to obtain enormous amounts of informationincluding our location right from the devices in our pockets.

Jaffer fears that increased ability of governments to spy produces a chilling effect. If people know their phones can be tracked, or their contents seized and extracted, they may be less willing to speak freely or criticize the government.

Meanwhile, even as the government expands its surveillance powers, it is getting more adapt at using laws to silence journalism and cover up its own activities.

According to Abdo, the staff attorney at the Knight Institute, the Justice Department has been particularly aggressive in invoking the Espionage Age to threaten reporters. In doing so, he says, it is using unproven legal theories to undermine the ability of journalists to talk to sources and conduct important reporting.

No court has decided how broadly that statute reaches or if it reaches as broadly as the government says it does, and if it violates the First Amendment, says Abdo.

In response, the Knight Amendment intends to advance the legal cause of whistleblowers. Specifically, Abdo says it will make a case that the First Amendment offers a shield for journalists and others who reveal information in the public interest.

Jaffer adds that the Institute will also focus on so-called structural litigation, which aims to reform government practices that stymie free speech and access to documents.

One such example is the growing number of current and former government workers who are subject to security clearance, which bars them from speaking without prior permission. The restraints may be sensible in the context of sensitive intelligence or military operations. But today more than 5 million Americansmany of whom possess little in the way of classified informationare subject to this censorship.

Its the largest system of prior restraints still in place in the United States. We think its unconstitutional, says Jaffer.

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Fighting for Free Speech in the Age of Trump and Twitter - Fortune

In yet another case trying the first amendment, ABC settled a $1.9 billion libel lawsuit from Beef Products Inc (BPI) in a state court in Elk Point, South Dakota on Wednesday. The suit stemmed from a 2012 story from ABCs World News, in which the broadcast repeatedly used the term pink slime to refer to lean, finely textured beef (LFTB).

BPI claimed the story, which highlighted the production LFTB and its USDA approval process, defamed the company and their beef product, which was at one point found in 70% of all ground beef from around the country. As a result of the story, BPI claimed they were forced to shutter three of their plants, and lay-off hundreds of employees, resulting in billions of dollars in damages.

The case had the potential to be one of the largest defamation suits in Americas history, due in large part to South Dakotas Agricultural Food Products Disparagement Act, which allows claimed damages to be tripled. This meant that BPIs 1.9 billion dollar claim could have resulted in a 5.7 billion dollar pay-out for ABC.

While the BPI case had been loitering in various courts for the past five years, the settlement earlier this week marks the third such high-profile libel case in recent years.

In 2016, a Florida jury found Gawker media guilty in a case stemming from the sites decision to publish wrestler Hulk Hogans sex tape. In November, a Virginia jury found the Rolling Stone guilty in their explosive 2014 report A Rape on Campus.

These cases come at a time in which the media is increasingly working against the court of public opinion, in a climate where fake news is a buzzword, and under a president who has been making headlines over the past week due to his attacks on journalists and news organizations.

Its this pernicious environment that has many first amendment lawyers concerned.

Part of it is the current political climate, said Alan Chen, a first amendment lawyer and professor of constitutional law at the University of Denver. Theres this wholesale onslaught against the media as sort of an untrustworthy institution. Sometimes the plaintiffs are bringing these cases in places where the juries are likely to be sympathetic with the businesses.

Indeed, ABC did attempt to persuade a judge that the case should not be heard in a South Dakota state court, largely because federal courts are viewed as more sympathetic to media organizations.

Chen argues that in a town like Elk Point, it would be difficult for ABC to get a fair shake.

The plaintiff is big employer. ABC is an outsider and an East coast news entity. Theres going to be bias because ABC is being accused of defaming an important employer, said Chen.

Further, Union County (the county in which Elk Point sits) went 67% for Trump who has repeatedly targeted news organizations in recent months and more intensely in recent days.

Though the terms of the settlement arent clear, the potential payout from the lawsuit was enough to prompt the Disney Corporation (ABCs parent company) to include the lawsuit on their 10-Q report, according to the Hollywood Reporter. Such a move indicates that the company believed the suit was potentially damaging enough to have a material impact on their bottom line.

Its that sort of belief that has scholars like Chen concerned. If a libel lawsuit has the possibility to impact the bottom line of a multi-billion dollar corporation like Disney, the potential impacts on a smaller media organization could be catastrophic.

Still, in most cases, the larger company does not carry an incentive to be very careful about what to report and how to report it. Even with will resourced companies, its hard to imagine there wouldnt be some hesitance to publish certain stories, said Chen. The downside of this is that I think they will start to censor themselves out of potential fears. Think about a much smaller entity. With much fewer resources theyre going to even be more hesitant.

The first amendment battles are far from over for the media, however. On Tuesday, former Alaska governor Sarah Palin filed a defamation lawsuit against the New York Times for their recent op-ed. Battles for the press may very well migrate from the Twittersphere to courtrooms, affecting constitutional press rights and how business is done within these organizations.

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Pink Slime: The Latest Battle over the First Amendment - MediaFile - MediaFile